It’ll nearly be like a picture print from Currier and Ives

These wonderful things are the things we’ll remember all through our lives. (Mitchell Parrish)

 

Okay, we don’t have snow here, and that kind of makes sleigh riding difficult.  I always wanted to do it though, and wonder if there’s any place even remotely close where one might have the opportunity.  

The very first thing I ever wrote with the idea of submitting it, (here’s where I’m going to lose EVERYONE) was a “Win a Dream Date With (unnamed celebrity) Contest”.  That was when I was about ten, and it was probably held by Tiger Beat Magazine.  I very carefully hand wrote a lovely scenario, a dream date, what would it be like, how it would go, how it would end.  My very first stab at romance writing.  In it I included a sleigh ride, an isolated chapel eerily unoccupied and lit with branches of candles everywhere.  Me in a full length white velvet ensemble with a fur muff (how uncool now), and probably, because I was ten, the entire thing culminated with a marriage proposal.  

There was weeping, and gasping, and a humble acceptance with moist eyes.  

I was TEN, okay?  

I brought all this up because from that day until I submitted the story “Catch Me If You Can,” which you’ll find on the Freebies page on this website, I never submitted another thing, and that was many, many long years.  Yet that one took second place at Yaoicon, (and you can blame them for encouraging me) and that was 2007.  In 2008 I had three novels and a short story published and I’m still pinching myself.  

And yeah, that ten-year-old is still twirling around the den in her mind to “Copacabana” (No the unnamed celebrity was NOT Barry Manilow) And NO, I didn’t win that contest.  I wrote the whole thing out in longhand on Mickey Mouse notebook paper and I’m thinking that there was a submissions guidelines epic fail.

Happy New Year. Maybe the highs and lows of this year will reverberate through many years to come, but there’s always room for hope that the world will work itself out, become a nicer place to live, and we can all spend the next few hours thinking about our place in it.

I’m hoping everyone’s dreams come true…

With Warmest Regards,

~ZAM~